Is the Internet world about to change? The Recording Industry Association of America RIAA is working with ISPs to act against pirate downloaders. Will this work? Already AT&T and Comcast amongst other US ISPs have written to persistent offenders and there's talk of a “three strikes and you're out” system where pirate downloaders and sharers will be disconnected.
In the UK letters have been sent to offenders and some recipients have responded welcoming the advice as they had not known about the illegal activity, most likely by their kids. Virgin Media owns 50% of the UK's fibre optic network and currently provides the highest download speeds of 50Mbps with plans to shortly offer up to 150Mbps. This kind of download speed is a real draw for downloaders. However Neil Berkett, Chief Executive of Virgin Media explained that they already throttle the bandwidth of certain users over a daily limit. They are also examine the nature of the data that users download. Mr Berkett says that Virgin has an obligation to manage the data and protecting the holders of intellectual property rights.
So perhaps a generation of kids who have grown up with “free” music will suddenly find that their world has changed. Just as the kids who used to copy from cassette to cassette in the 1970s lost their “free“ music when the CD came along (before writeable CDs arrived) perhaps today's kids are in for the same shock.
No comments:
Post a Comment